It is possible that we have been admitting too many people of too wide a variety for the native American to Americanize. It is certainly true that we should hesitate to admit many others until we have demonstrated our ability to provide an assimilation policy for the nation. We cannot forever depend upon the missionary for the Americanization of aliens. Shall we close the doors as the only way to preserve Americanism? Will this be a confession of our utter failure to deal in a statesmanlike way with either the international or national situation which confronts us?
It seems to me that our real enemy is not an aggressive foreignism, but a passive, complacent Americanism or nativism. What we really need to fear is, not that we shall be invaded by civilizations and ideals we cannot assimilate, but that we shall fail to develop and perpetuate and extend to all Americans the civilization and the ideals we firmly believe to be American.
I consider that a most dangerous fallacy in this country to-day is the belief that the evils that have overtaken us through the immigrant are the result of an undue expansion of our hospitality, an undue breadth of interpretation of America as the land of liberty, open to all. What we are really suffering from is not undue expansion but undue contraction, a determined withdrawal of native Americans from the real situation in America, a positive refusal to face their destiny, a stupid neglect to provide anything for the immigrant but a job.
It seems to me the height of complacent nativism to ascribe our social and political evils to unrestricted immigration, when as a matter of fact we have never developed facilities for assimilating them or given the matter much constructive attention of any kind. We have no information concerning the numbers and kinds of immigrants which our country and our institutions can assimilate, and until we have these we are not in a position for judgment.
I believe emphatically that unless America can show itself worthy of its traditions and opportunities, we should not be honored nor sought as “an asylum for the oppressed,” nor be regarded as “a refuge from tyranny,” and that we should close our doors and put up a sign that means what we say. I am equally positive that we should give a constructive policy a fair trial—starting at Ellis Island and following the alien to the last hamlet with information, advice, and protection, with assurance of equality before the law in all respects, and giving him the full guarantees of our Constitution. If under these conditions he prefers his home language to ours, pays his allegiance to a country other than America, sends his savings home to be invested, persists in a second-rate standard of living, asserts his rights but refuses to meet his duties, reads the foreign language press instead of the American, joins the racial society instead of the city club,—then we shall know the fault is not the native American’s, and we can put up the bars with a clear conscience and with courage in our hearts.
Americanism faces the future and is courageous. Nativism faces the past and is apprehensive. Never in the history of nations shall we have a greater opportunity to attain stability and leadership than now. The native American has in his own hands the power to build a great future for his land. He has the needed qualities, too; he has an idealism such as the world never witnessed before, in so high a degree as to seem naïve or childish to citizens of older races dyed in intrigue and used to always looking for the hidden motive under every apparently open move. He has courage and a faith in liberty detached though it sometimes is from his daily life. And I am one of those who hold that he still believes in equality—in spite of the manifold contradictions we see all about us.
But he is, as we have seen, blind beyond parallel to his opportunities—to a degree that makes us question sometimes whether he has not, after all, committed the unpardonable sin of sinning against the light. He has been stupid, foolish, trivial. He has been content to treat his belief in liberty and equality as many a man treats his religion—as something precious, but not to be used in daily life.
It is not too late for the American to face about from his nativism, from his contentment with considering only the needs and interests of the native born, and to consider the needs of America as a whole, America as he sees it and meets it every day, in his shop or mill,—the America of the native born and the foreign born as well. Let him but recognize once for all that the foreigner’s needs are the same as his needs, that everyone wants a decent home and a place to sit in, and book or paper to read, a safe place to keep his savings, a chance for himself and his family to keep well,—all the varied needs of the body and the soul,—let him but recognize that the alien and the native-born both need and desire these things, and then make it his responsibility to provide them and the battle will be won.
We are the great adventure of the twentieth century. And the foes we have to fear are not the hosts that come to us to profit by our liberty and opportunity, but the lack of wisdom and of courage that makes us unfit to administer our heritage and to meet our destiny. Nativism is no substitute for Americanism.